It's Universal...

In all our traveling, we've learned a few things that are universal:

-  people like to complain about the weather

- boys love to pretend to shoot guns, girls love to play "house"

-most every one shares a mutual hatred of Dawson's Creek

&

- everyone loves to go Strawberry picking

Who knew we could go strawberry picking in Asia?

Here are a few photos of our all-day adventure:

Joelle was mimicking the "riiibit" of a pool of frogs nearby, going "Waaaaa"

 Joelle and John, friends since the womb.

 Don't freak out, Emily! No car seats, rarely even a seat belt.  That's why we walk everywhere.

The slightly cryptic scene we passed while heading to strawberry field #2:

Who knows what that cat is thinking, staring at the woman who is knitting... with a large bottle of beer nearby... at 10:00 in the morning. 

When we saw how muddy the fields were, I was SHOCKED to see everyone abandon their shoes and step right into the mud.  Most people carry a newspaper around to have something to sit on so they don't get dust on their pants when they sit on a park bench.

 I love the dainty pose and the hand-woven basket in her hand!  Joelle fell in love with this JieJie (big sister) because she kept a steady stream of strawberries coming.

I thought Joelle would get a kick out of getting her feet in the mud.

 I was wrong.  She only laughed about the whole mud thing when I almost slipped and fell in it!



At the end of the day, we headed to a different part of the country-side to a river-- it was breathtaking.  Here is a panoramic I took. (Love my camera!) 

The greatest part of the day was that everyone else was so busy having fun that they didn't have their usual fun time of telling me what to do with Joelle every minute of the day.  The onslaught of unwelcome advice and criticism sometimes makes me retreat back into my house for several hours, but today they just lived and let live. aaaah.